II. Either/Or

Twilight is not thinking about the letter she received at all. It is quite inconsequential. Well, no. That’s a lie. It’s actually incredibly important—it is from the Princess of the Sun, after all, Twilight’s teacher and greatest hero. But it is not really pressing in a sense that it is urgent. No—she thought, as she helped herself to more soup—answering the letter too quickly was, in fact, a disservice.

It was an odd request, certainly. Was everything alright in Ponyville, indeed. Twilight supposes it is. Of course, though it seems an odd question, she knows in a far deeper way that it was not frivolous. Celestia enjoys jokes, but she is rarely frivolous. Either the Princess was asking honestly or she wanted to see how Twilight would react to an external or internal threat. Or just how alert she is? That is the rub, of course. What was the intent?

“Oh, Applejack, are you finished with the butter?” Rarity asks.

“Sure. Take it, Rares.”

Twilight sees the glow of Rarity’s magic and the aforementioned butter, but also does not see. It is a detail of her environment, but not an important one. Catalogued, but without much importance to it.

“Now, forgive me for sidetracking you. Could you finish your stories? I was quite interested.”

“Ah, sure, didn’t know farm-stuff could be interestin’. I mean, there’s the whole…”

Yes, intentionality bothers Twilight. How can she even begin to tell what it is exactly the Princess wants? What does alright mean? Does alright mean everypony is happy? Or that the Everfree has not encroached? Does it end up meaning a nebulous feeling of wellbeing? Twilight sighs and slurps her soup, as it is the only real course of action. Not that it isn’t nice, because it is. This is a fact of slightly greater importance than the passing of the butter and thus is both catalogued and analyzed briefly. It is quite good. She should come here when Spike grows tired of cooking.

The letter arrived two days ago. Twilight remembers its advent while she pauses to drink from her glass of water, distracted by the heat. It is extraordinarily hot today. Far hotter than usual for a Ponyville summer. The weather ponies had been having emergency meetings up at Cloudsdale figuring out how to deal with it. Rainbow dropped back into town around two in the morning (Twilight, of course, being up) and opened the door like a corpse just risen from the grave. Twilight offered her something to drink, but Rainbow simply asked for a light. Just a little one, can you give me something like that? I’ve been in the air all day. Tired as hell. I can find my way to Rarity’s just fine. I just… it’s dark, and… But of course, Twilight could do something like that easily.

And she watched Rainbow walk off into the night with her little will-of-the-wisp, her steps shaky and her head low, but not falling apart. Twilight felt sad, watching her go, but she could not tear her eyes away without effort. She feels a little sad now, eating her lunch with her friends in the bright, intensely hot day. Why had she ordered soup? That was a terrible idea.

The letter had been there when she turned around. Spike was long asleep, which meant that the princess had sent it by waypoint—the receiving end being Twilight’s desk. Twilight hasn’t done maintenance on the thaumaturgical bindings of the waypoint since she moved in, so it is a little temperamental. The letter was probably written hours before. Curious, and glad for the distraction from the lonely Rainbow Dash, Twilight took it upstairs and sat on her bed. She perused it twice. Only twice. Usually, she read letters from her teacher three or four times if they were short enough. But after two times, she felt odd. She glanced out the window. It was a new moon, so the stars were out in force like a great army, spear points ready, like knights prepared to joust at worlds.

“…Honestly, I don’t really got an explanation,” Applejack says. Twilight is ashamed to realize that she no longer knows the direction of the conversation.

“It is rather… strange,” Rarity says softly.

“Yeah! But strange things are usually interesting. I mean it is interesting, but not like ‘I wanna go see’ interesting but interesting like ‘oh that’s interesting I hope it doesn’t gobble me up’ interesting. Or maybe—”

“We get the point, Pinkie,” Applejack says, cutting Pinkie off with a chuckle. “Yeah, you’re right. I mean, don’t get me wrong, even I need a bit of excitement once in a while, but I ain’t really down with the inexplicable, y’know?”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight cuts in, and four sets of eyes turn to look at her. She notices that she is sweating slightly and considers wiping it off with a napkin. Later. Right now it would seem odd. “Could you repeat what… I mean—sorry, I spaced out. What’s inexplicable?”

“Thought that would get somethin’ out of ya, Twilight,” Applejack says. She seems smug. Twilight doesn’t blame her, but the tone grates. “Anyhow. Lemme back up. Had an odd happenin’ on the farm about… two days ago? Not sure, really. I noticed yesterday, but I think it took longer than just one day.”

“‘It’ being…?”

“The grass. Honestly, it’s probably just some foals, Twi, so don’t get too excited, but the grass is starting to grow and die in patches and strange… patterns, I guess. Around a spot out in the field by our house.”

Twilight blinks. “Explain,” she says, her voice clipped. She is analyzing, picturing. She sees the map of the farmhouse and barn and the areas around it as she knows them. “Where, exactly?”

“It’s between the… Aw, you ain’t gonna know the numbers. You know the orchard closest to our house? Between it in the next one over, there’s a little path. Gates leadin’ into each enclosure and there’s some empty space where I ain’t planted another tree since I lost a few last year to frost and that blight. Before the gate. Spirals.”

Twilight bites her lip. “That…”

“It could be somepony tryin’ to spook you!” Pinkie says, grinning suddenly. “You know. A prank. I mean, it’s not really a nice one, as the only pony who can laugh is laughing all alone… but it could be that. A trick? No, what would be the right word…”

“Sorry,” Fluttershy speaks up. “Did you say… growing? As in, overnight, the grass got tall?”

“As in, overnight one half of the circle, if we’re gonna call it that, is all flowers, and the other half is dead as a desert. Just ash. Not dirt. Ash. Smells like my pipe, only without the niceness. Like burning.”

“Well,” Fluttershy continues slowly, “yesterday, while I was doing my rounds, I noticed that the the grass on either side of the path was all dead. Somepony must have gone the wrong way with a cart while I was in town and had to turn it around. The dirt path had ruts in it.”

“But no symmetry?” Twilight asks.

Fluttershy shakes her head.

Twilight sighs. “That’s strange, AJ. I’m not really sure what to make of it, either. Maybe the same pony is behind both.”

“Well it’s a rotten pony if you ask me. Killin’ my grass and diggin’ ruts in the paths and whatnot,” Applejack replies sourly.

Rarity, who was chewing silently, coughs. “Be that as it may, it could also simply be a foal who doesn’t yet know any better. Or they could be unrelated. Let’s not be too hasty!” Her horn glows, and Twilight notices for the first time that Rarity has quite moved on past lunch and on to tea.

The letter weighs on her, she knows that now. It shouldn’t. It isn’t urgent or dire or even terribly long. Less than five hundred words. Only one question, and that question rather… unacademic. In fact, it is quite possible that Twilight completely imagined that the Princess was as concerned as she seemed when Twilight saw the latter. After all, she knows very well that emotional responses are often heightened in the late hours, when the body is tired and the mind has been on far too long and the stars no longer seem far away at all but rather too close for comfort.

In fact, Twilight feels tired right now. It is the crash of the coffee addict, the pony stuck eternally in senior year of university as if life was a dissertation that required more hours than day provided. Sleeping at two and half-past, up at nine—like clockwork wheels, she has kept the regiment up since she moved here. Celestia tried to reduce her course workload, but Twilight insisted on maintaining her active presence both in the academy at large and in the journals published at Celestia’s school. The basement of the library was remodeled—a project that cost her much sleep. The deficit is large. She yawns for what seems minutes.

“Do they have coffee?” she asks, blinking. The sun is far, far too bright. And also too hot. Is it hotter than before? She supposes that is not so strange. It is midday, after all. But it is far, far too hot. It just doesn’t get this hot in Central Province.

“Of course,” Rarity says with a smile. “Now, girls, do you see why I’ve been simply raving about this place? It is quite wonderful.” She gestures to a waiter presumably passing behind Twilight’s eyes that she does not see, but notices when the stallion (she guesses from the tread of his hooves) summons up his own magic.

“Thanks for inviting us,” Fluttershy says, smiling. “I’ve been looking forward to it all week, really. The critters back at my cottage have been so upset recently, and I have no idea why…”

Rarity frowns. “Oh, dear, I’m quite sorry about that… Would it be at all helpful if we skip our grooming appointment tomorrow for Opal and simply reschedule? I would hate to bother you.”

“If you don’t mind…”

“Of course. It is no problem ‘t all, my dear.” Rarity frowns. She looks down at her tea—these are small gestures, and Twilight notices them in the same way that she notices and catalogues how many semicolons are on a page or how many times the tertiary threads in Starswirl’s Fourteenth Incantationary Excercise overlap with each other—that is to say, she notices it, and she is not sure her friends do. Rarity stares into a cup, and Twilight names it forlorn. “I had hoped Rainbow could be here with us, but she is exhausted. I found her on the couch this morning.” The spoon stirs the dark tea as Rarity’s magic thoughtfully propels it. A light touch. Twilight wonders if Rarity is even aware of it. “She didn’t make it up to our bed, you see. I…” The rest trails off, as she coughs.

The remains of lunch are removed. Fluttershy also takes tea, but the rest have coffee. Or, at least, Twilight and Applejack have coffee, and Pinkie has something which resembles coffee but is a cleverly constructed trap of sugar and cream. Twilight has dared to try it only once, and the experience haunts her nightmares in an absurd fashion.

Twilight puts the letter—and the circles—aside for a moment. She watches Rarity instead and is reminded of Rainbow Dash in the cold night. And it was cold, she remembers that now. Strangely cold. She had wanted to think it was unnaturally cold, but she rejects that word as literary as opposed to scientific. Florid description has its place, she decides with certainty, like a mason laying brick.

It is strange how the years pile on all at once, all of a sudden, in a brief window of sunlight. There are no shadows at midday, and yet the lines on Rarity’s face are visible. Her coat is short and well-kept as always, her mane exquisitely styled as it has been since Twilight moved in so long ago, and yet these things are like whitewash on a tomb. The image comes and goes with startling quickness, and Twilight does not like the comparison. But, regardless, Rarity looks much older as she sips from her tea. Her eyes are not as focused as they once were, her jaw not as strong. She is not old, but she is not supple and young. None of them are. Foals made Pinkie plump, and family life as a joint partner with the Cakes made her slightly calmer. Fluttershy is still quiet, but her voice never shakes these days. Marriage changed her too. Twilight suddenly looks up from her encircling thoughts and realizes they are all older and more worn than she is accustomed to thinking of herself and her friends as being.

Tea is short. In the old days, Twilight would reserve an hour after lunch, trying her best to be social and available. Applejack would always go early and so would Pinkie, but Rainbow and Rarity would often stay to chat. Fluttershy and Twilight conversed often in the cafes of Ponyville, or on Twilight’s balcony. Some were about Macintosh. A were about barrenness. A few even concerned Applejack, but Twilight does not want to think about those. At all.

But they all leave so quickly. Almost all of them. Pinkie has an order to fill. Fluttershy can’t leave her animals alone for too long, and she has her own rounds on the forest’s edge. Applejack has orchards and fence mending.They all have their own little, encapsulated lives as she did, with their own private affairs and small, insular worlds, cut off from her own. She has no idea what happened behind those eyes.

Twilight feels strange. Unpleasant.

Rarity, at last, lingers. She looks out, towards the boutique, but makes no move to rise. She is still as a statue in the palace gardens.

“Rarity?” Twilight says after the last of their friends leave.

Rarity flinches. Twilight loses whatever words were next, surprised at how… unalert her friend is. Rarity is the one who listens, who knows who says what and why and how they say it and what it means. The reader of signs and ponies. It’s how she sells and makes deals, charms stallions and, at least once, woos mares.

“I’m sorry, Twilight,” she says softly. Frowning. She manipulates the teapot and pours herself another cup. “You took my by surprise.”

“Yeah, I know,” Twilight murmurs, hesitantly. She leaves her seat across the table from Rarity and goes around to the other side. Rarity looks out, past the little fence, away from the tables and the doors into the cafe itself, and away from Twilight, who sits behind her quietly.

“The library isn’t as busy this time of year, is it?” Rarity asks as if discovering it for the first time.

Twilight shakes her head uselessly. Rarity remains staring out at the street. Ponies pass by, none of them looking at either of them. They say hello to each other in the street, go into buildings, come out of them. All of them on entirely separate paths and Twilight fleetingly wonders at how they all mean things that she cannot be sure of at all.

“Oh, good,” Rarity says. Coming from her, the offhoofed, casual comment is less connective small talk and more a sign of something under the surface. Or is it? Twilight is perplexed. There must be a way to be sure. She examines herself and her time here with her friends. Rarity spoke quite often, as she always does. She smiled often, drank tea, and ate bread as she always did. She asked after Pinkie’s son and made sure to ask everypony about their own little lives. Normal behavior.

Twilight reaches out hesitantly with a hoof then put it down. She squirms. If she risks action and is wrong, she is a fool. If she does nothing and is wrong, she is worse. How could she tell? How does she read the unreadable signs given by a partially known quantity?

“I guess it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Rarity says softly.

“Rarity?”

“Sorry. I mean, how I’m feeling.”

Twilight bites her lip, now glad for Rarity’s refusal to look at her. “Not… I mean, not exactly.”

“You’re a kind pony, Twilight. I saw what you did.”

Nervousness blossoms in her, cold and then hot, like something prickly and infuriatingly invisible. “T-thank you,” she says and curses that she was off her guard. She faltered and thus made no meaningful decision and now appears a fool anyhow. This was not how she helped her friends, bumbling around like a nervous filly at a school dance. “Um… what exactly do you mean?” she asks. She is mostly certain, but convention requires going through motions.

“Oh… I’m sorry, Twilight. I’m distracted. I’m not quite… myself today. That’s a terrible expression, really. I am myself. Simply unhappy. What a naked way to say it. Unhappy. But I meant your will-of-the-wisp. It hadn’t dissipated when I woke up this morning and found Dash on our couch. I didn’t put it out. It was just floating about her like a little watchdog, and I simply didn’t have the heart to banish the little thing.”

“She stopped by on the way home,” Twilight offers. The story is important. She has no idea why. She simply sees the memory of Dash and her little light in the wide, endless dark, and it burns a hole through the floor of her mind, right onto her tongue, desperate to get out. “She was so tired and wanted some light to get home… I didn’t really ask her why, but—”

“She hasn’t had more than three hours a night in weeks,” Rarity says quickly. Harshly, even, Twilight thinks as her mouth hangs open. “I’m sorry,” Rarity said again, tone softer.

“Rarity… are you alright? Are you two alright?”

“What is alright?”

Twilight wonders the same thing.

“I’m not sure. I think a lot depends on you answer.” It is a lame response, and Twilight knows it. Everypony who can hear it would say so. Not that any others really notice it at all.

Rarity sighs and finally turns back to her. She seems even older than before, and Twilight wants to recoil, but will not.

“Twilight,” Rarity begins slowly as if she is piecing together a puzzle that she stared at for hours and hours, “I’m not sure how to answer that. Are we going to get a divorce or murder one another? No. I live to give. Rainbow wouldn’t leave behind someone if they begged her. If anypony was going to struggle through unhappiness, it would be us.”

“But you’re unhappy.”

“Oh, Twilight, don’t say that as if it’s a point against anything. It’s simply a fact, a part of the backdrop, I guess you could say. The summer is too hot. Which makes your… food choice seem strange.” She smiles, and it lights up her face, almost enough to dispell the water in her eyes that is distressingly close to being tears. Twilight feels trapped.

“I was kind of distracted, myself,” Twilight offers, shrugging.

“I noticed, dear. I’m sorry. I should be asking you about it, not loading you down with my home life and marriage. It’s rude.”

“Friendship isn’t rude,” Twilight said quickly. “I listen to anything you say. I mean, it’s what you do for me.”

“Reciprocation.” Rarity chuckles. “It’s beautiful despite itself. But, as I was saying: Dash and I are rather unhappy, Twilight, and I’ve put it off for far too long. I’m not sure if it’s really with one another. Isn’t that sad? Rainbow has been so hardworking, so hard-pressed, and still tried to see me as much as she can. She brought me back a rainbow gem from Cloudsdale… she knows I love them.” Rarity smiled, almost shyly. “She is back in my bed, where she belongs, more times than she is not.” The smile faded away like sand. “But it doesn’t feel like it. She gets in late. She’s exhausted. Rainbow couldn’t make it up to bed last night, and partially it was because she took one look at the stairs and just gave up.

“But that’s not really all of it. I know that. She has a job, Twilight. A very, very important one. I’m very proud of her. Whenever I get the chance, I look right in her beautiful rose eyes and I say so in as eloquently and succinctly a way as possible, I assure you! I make a conscious effort—it is how relationships live, Twilight, by intentionality.”

Twilight succeeds in not grimacing at the word.

“But she shies away. No matter what somepony says, no matter how much one is told that it is quite alright, no harm is done, there is a little seed of doubt somewhere, Twilight. A hesitation, the suspicion that it is, in fact, not quite alright, and some harm has indeed been done. Perhaps more harm than one can even guess at. I am lonely, and she knows that. I see it weigh on her—or at least, I think it weighs on her.”

“After examining your evidence, you think so,” Twilight says softly.

Rarity chuckles. “That is so like you, my friend. Evidence, yes, I suppose you could relay it in those rather dry terms! As if yours truly were a detective of love! No, Twilight, I am piecing together shreds of evidence to guess blindly at intent. Much of this is intuition. Maybe she simply didn’t want to wake me, Twilight. It’s silly to be upset about such a thing. I’m very well aware of that, and, in fact, that is also part of the problem. It isn’t the large things that upset us, Twilight. The small quarrels are always the grievances that peek over the wall to the unsuspecting emotions below! But all I could think about is how long she’s been away in some form or another, mentally or physically. She’s too tired for talking, often. Or reading. She eats little. Exhaustion pushes her to a quick bedtime and…” Rarity faltered, and wiped her eyes with a hoof. “She’s too tired for love, Twilight. It’s nonsense. It’s all just my weakness shining through, isn’t it? Am I being foolish?”

“I… I’m not sure—”

“Then who is, Twilight? She may be gone when I go home, and for some reason that frightens me. I don’t want her to be. I want her to be there, snoring without shame or remorse, like the loving, beautiful fool she is. And if she isn’t, I’m going to scream, Twilight. I will be livid. I will storm your library like a griffon with nine years of bad luck and a keg of some awful pegasi spirit and demand you give me magical wings to hunt her down with, and I will tie her to our wall.”

Twilight blinks.

And Rarity blinks back. She stops, lays her head in her hooves, and laughs.

“Twilight, life is so foolish. Don’t mind me. I’m a foolish mare turning old.”

“Not so old. Or so foolish, Rarity.”

Rarity smiles up at her. “You’re a kind pony, Twilight. I’m going to head home now if I may take my leave of you.” She stands and stretches. “And Twilight… do yourself a favor and sleep more.”

They hug, and Rarity laughs—bitterly? happily? both?—and she leaves Twilight at the table, looking out at the street.

Idly, Twilight watches Rarity as she walks. Her gait is more certain than Rainbow's, perhaps more confidant, or at least less weary. Her legs do not struggle. Her head is high.

Twilight also notices, suddenly, how odd it is that all of the new cobblestones in the little square in front of the boutique circle around a central point. Were they always like that?

She isn't sure they had.